The Manhattan Deception

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  The traffic was heavy and roadworks were backing up long sections of the New Jersey Turnpike, so it was forty-five minutes after leaving the rental park when she finally turned south onto US1 for the final leg of a miserable journey. If there was one thing Cathy hated more than being late it was being unable to let anyone know: every time she tried to phone Reiss, the call just kept bouncing to voicemail. Perhaps he’s so pissed off with me that he’s cancelled, she thought.

  Following the nagging voice of the car’s sat nav – it reminded her of her mother – she turned west off the Bayard Lane section of the gridlock that is 206. This brought her into an area of elegant colonial houses just to the north west of the main university site. When she got to the next junction she was surprised to see that the road was blocked off. Behind a double strand of blue and white police tape, two Princeton Borough police cars and a fire tender were parked across the street: an acrid smell of burning filled the air. Water from a leaking fire hose ran down the street.

  Cathy left her car round the corner and continued on foot. Because of the trees she couldn’t see exactly where the fire had been, so she ducked under the tape and had only gone a few yards when a policeman appeared from behind the fire tender and motioned her to stop.

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am, are you a resident of this street?’

  ‘No, I’ve come to see Mr Reiss. He lives, or rather his father lived, at number seventeen.’

  At this the policeman looked alarmed. ‘Are you kin to Mr Reiss, ma’am?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ She showed him her press card. ‘I was supposed to be here a couple of hours ago but my flight from DC got delayed.’

  He started backing away from her slightly. ‘And nobody called you?’

  ‘No,’ said Cathy. ‘I was trying to call him.’

  ‘Er, just wait here, please, would you?’

  A few moments later he returned with his lieutenant who asked Cathy to follow him. Stepping over hoses and doing their best to avoid the puddles and charred remains from what had obviously been a serious house fire, she followed him along the tree-lined street. A group of firemen were standing drinking coffee that a neighbour had brought out to them. As they made their way towards the site of the blaze she looked at the colonial-style houses with a tinge of envy; anyone without a spare two million dollars needn’t even bother asking.

  The lieutenant brought them to a halt in front of a scene of devastation. ‘This is number seventeen, Miss Stenmark.’ He paused. ‘This is where it was anyway.’

  All that remained were the concrete footings, part of the stairwell and a few blackened timbers. The rest was a smouldering heap.

  Cathy’s face turned pale. ‘Where’s Robert Reiss?’

  The lieutenant consulted his clipboard. ‘Who? What name did you say?’

  ‘Robert Reiss. This was his late father’s house. He was staying there while he sorted out his affairs.’

  ‘We have the house down as unoccupied, ma’am. The owner recently passed away.’

  ‘I know that but where’s the son?’

  ‘That’s just what I’m worried about,’ said the lieutenant. ‘The guys from the fire department said they hadn’t found anyone, so if he’s in there, there isn’t going to be much left. Things were bad enough, but if what you say is true, looks like they just got a whole bunch worse.’

  ‘Guess they did.’

  ‘No,’ said the lieutenant. ‘You don’t understand. This was arson, now we’re looking at a murder.’

  ‘Arson?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here. The fire chief said he knew almost straight away what it was. A couple of hours ago they confirmed that an accelerant had been used; probably regular unleaded gas.’

  Cathy stood motionless, trying to take it all in. First Lisa, then Reiss senior, now his son. She tried to stay focussed, not to make two and two equal five – until that moment she’d thought this was nothing more than a series of tragic coincidences – but what was it he’d said to her on the phone? Something about James Atkinson and Eric Pauli being in danger? But not him, he sounded perfectly relaxed, so he never suspected a thing. Try as she might, the doubts about the first two deaths came crowding in causing her mind to shoot off at wild tangents, none of which led anywhere. Then she snapped back to reality. Aware that the lieutenant was staring at her, Cathy felt he was expecting her to say something. ‘When did this happen?’ she asked. ‘It looks pretty recent.’

  ‘A neighbour raised the alarm about four AM, but the place was well alight by then.’ He shrugged. ‘Old wooden houses like these, they go up like a torch. Especially if they’re given a helping hand. We’ll just have to hope we can find something from a private security camera that’ll give us a lead.’

  She stayed another fifteen minutes explaining to the lieutenant why she was there; that she was doing a piece on Pauli and was interested in the refugee family angle – particularly anyone like Georg Reiss who’d fled Nazi Germany and found success in America. Her suspicions kept nagging away like the voice from the GPS, but she kept them to herself. They exchanged contact details and she promised to contact the police if she came across anything suspicious. Where do I start? she thought as she walked back to the car.

  The traffic on the way back to Newark was even worse than on the way down so by the time she’d dropped off the rental car and headed for the terminal, the display board was showing that the next flight to DC was due to leave in ten minutes: just time she thought. She ran to the airline’s desk to be told that no, the flight was right on time, and yes, she’d missed it. Another three hour wait.

  To kill the time, she got out her laptop and wrote up the story of Pauli, brought in the paintings, the late Georg Reiss and his recently deceased son. It added another two thousand words to the feature she was planning on the senator, and instead of sticking to the bare bones of the story, she let the narrative take control, leaving her virtually a passenger as it rambled first one way then another. She read it through and thought about deleting it all and starting again, but getting everything down in black and white had been a useful exercise: the harder she looked at each event, the less each one looked like coincidence.

  ***

  Another exhausting round of interviews came to an end and James collapsed into the back of a cab outside Washington National airport. ‘Do you know, Mick,’ he said, ‘if I have to smile at anyone else, the top of my bloody head will fall off.’ He looked at his schedule – another three sessions and that was it for the day – time no longer had any meaning; his very existence was ruled by the dictates of Cuthbertson’s merciless planning and not one second of the day was wasted. His head was nodding as the cab neared the centre of town. As if from far away he heard a mobile phone ringing and then suddenly realised that it was his. He answered: Cathy Stenmark calling from Newark. For a moment he tried to work out what on earth she was doing in Nottinghamshire until it dawned on him that she was stuck at the airport.

  She told him about the house in Princeton and that it was highly probable that somewhere under the embers was the body of Robert Reiss.

  ‘But who’d want to do something like that?’ he asked. ‘Did they say anything about his father?’

  ‘Nothing. Even if the police had suspicions they wouldn’t tell the press until they’d run out of leads – we’re always their last port of call. And anyway, before anyone goes creating conspiracy theories, it’s possible that whoever torched the house didn’t know he was in there – unlikely, I’ll admit but possible. Can you talk? There’s a bunch of stuff I need to ask you.’

  Cuthbertson was eying him suspiciously. ‘No,’ said James. ‘Not really. I’ll call you later.’

  He rang off and Cuthbertson dug him in the ribs. ‘See, I said you’d want to shag her.’

  James tried to laugh it off, but the more he thought about their brief conversation, the more concerned he became.

  The following morning, Senator Eric Pauli’s diary secretary took a call from Cathy Stenmark. She che
cked the on-line calendar and the hard-copy diary that never left her desk: against the entry for the first interview was scribbled the word “priority” in Vince Novak’s spidery handwriting. The follow-up meeting was duly entered in the diary for two PM.

  ‘You did what?’ Vince Novak threw his briefcase down in the middle of the floor and, not even stopping to take off his coat, strode behind the desk. ‘Let me see that,’ he said, snatching the diary from the desk. ‘He can’t do it. Call her now and cancel.’

  The diary secretary looked at him in disbelief. She’d seen him angry before, but never like this and never over something so trivial. ‘But it’s your handwriting, Vince. You told me yourself that we had to keep New Horizons sweet. What’s the matter with you? It’s just another interview for Pete’s sake.’

  Novak took a deep breath and for a moment said nothing. ‘Yeah, sorry. I’m being a jerk.’ He passed the diary back to her, making sure it was open at the right page. ‘Bad day I’m afraid – the world association of idiots has been stalking me all week.’

  She put her head on one side and stared at him intently. ‘And am I a member of the association?’

  Novak forced a laugh and the tension eased a little. ‘No, of course not. Like I said, bad day.’

  ‘Well, next time, kick the cat, not me,’ she replied. Novak took his coat off and glanced over at her as she busied herself answering yet another e-mail. Maybe if she lost twenty pounds or so, he thought… no, let’s not go there, look what happened to Bill Clinton.

  When Cathy arrived for the interview, Vince Novak stayed hidden in his office.

  Cathy noticed at once that Eric Pauli was on edge and looking tired. She’d have put it down to the rigours of months on the campaign trail had his answers not been far more guarded than during their previous meeting. The famous Pauli charm was nowhere in sight. They recapped some of the topics they’d already discussed and then she steered the conversation towards the choppier waters of his childhood. ‘We were talking about your parents,’ she said, ‘What was it like to lose your mother when you were so young?’

  For a few seconds he made no reply and Cathy was starting to wish she’d stuck to safer ground, but the reply when it came was as touching as it was frank. ‘Same as for any kid of that age I guess: the end of the world only ten times worse.’

  ‘Must have been terrible.’

  ‘It was. Like I told you, my mother never really learned to speak English. She could just about read it but at home we spoke German all the time. It was my first language and when I started school I didn’t understand a thing – wet myself I don’t know how many times because I didn’t know how to ask to be excused – and also I had this real heavy German accent. Now don’t forget, this was the mid-fifties and most of the kids in my class had fathers who’d fought in the war.’

  ‘Can’t have been easy. Didn’t they make any allowance for the fact that your parents had been anti-Nazis?’

  ‘It didn’t make any difference to them, they beat the shit out of me just the same – please don’t print that. Lasted all the way into junior high. Even though I learned to sound like the other kids, whenever my mom was around I had to translate for her so just in case anyone had forgotten that I was a “lousy kraut” they’d get a reminder and it would start again.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  Pauli laughed at the memory. ‘I learned to get my retaliation in first. As soon as it looked like anyone was going to start picking on me, I’d find the biggest kid in the group and hit him as hard as I could. Used to work real well.’

  Cathy noted with satisfaction that he was starting to lighten up. Just as well, the next question wasn’t going to be easy. ‘And then there was the accident.’

  He paused again, deep in thought. ‘Yeah, like I said, just the same as for any other seventh grader; the end of my little world, which, however crappy it may’ve been, at least gave me a degree of security. I guess you could say we were extremely close, not that that’s anything unusual between mother and son.’

  ‘I assume you were all she had.’

  ‘I was – just me and her memories. She had no real friends, I was bullied at school – although I did my best to spare her the details – and so we relied on each other. Not that I really knew her if I’m honest.’

  ‘And she never thought about going back to Germany?’

  ‘She talked about it in a vague sort of way but I never got the feeling it was serious. What she wanted to go back to was the Germany she knew before the war. That’s the advantage of the past, isn’t it? We know the results, good or bad, without the uncertainty of what happens next. I don’t think she was unique in that respect, but what made it worse for her is the part of Germany she grew up in is now part of Poland. It sounds self-pitying now, but there were times when I wished I’d been in the car with her.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘To put it bluntly, my life sucked. Short of having red hair, I couldn’t have had much less going for me – again, for Pete’s sake don’t print that or I’ll get sackfuls of hate mail. I’d become an argumentative, aggressive little bastard and I didn’t like sports. So when I was farmed out to other families while they tried to work out what to do with me, I’d end up fighting with their kids.’

  ‘So they moved you on.’

  ‘Yup, like “pass the parcel”. No one wanted to get stuck with me, and looking back I can’t say I blame them.’

  Cathy changed tack. ‘When we last spoke, Senator, we were talking about men like Georg Reiss.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’ Pauli’s face showed no sign of reaction to the name.

  She watched him intently. ‘I take it you heard about his son?’

  ‘No, what about him?’

  ‘He’s been murdered.’

  If Eric Pauli felt any emotion his face didn’t betray it. ‘But that’s terrible. What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘He was staying at his late father’s house in Princeton and the night before last someone torched the place with him in it.’

  Pauli tutted. ‘Well, all I can say is that I hope the Police catch whoever’s responsible as quickly as possible.’

  She changed tack again, always watching for a reaction. ‘So you don’t feel any connection with the German diaspora? Nothing to link you with people like Reiss, Werner von Braun, Max Standfluss?’

  Still no reaction, Cathy noted. Pauli shook his head and continued. ‘Not really. They were my parents’ generation and, although I grew up speaking their language, I’ve always felt American.’

  ***

  Once again, Vince Novak waited until Cathy was on her way out of the building before making an appearance. He sat on the corner of Pauli’s desk, drinking a coffee. ‘How’d it go?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, pretty good,’ said Pauli. ‘You never told me Reiss had a son.’

  Novak shrugged. ‘That’s because I didn’t know.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d researched the guy.’

  ‘I had. His wife died in 2005 but we didn’t find any son.’

  ‘Well, it’s irrelevant now. He’s dead too.’

  Novak slid off the desk and walked to the window. ‘So where’s your problem, Eric?’

  ‘I have two problems. One, it happened the day before yesterday and two, Cathy Stenmark just told me it was murder. Someone set fire to the house with him in it.’

  Novak turned round to face him. ‘So why’s that a problem for us? These things happen. Maybe he had enemies, who knows?’

  ‘What was it you said the other day when that journalist drowned?’

  Novak made a gesture of indifference. ‘How should I know? That was ages ago.’

  ‘You said we got lucky.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, that was insensitive. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s not the point, Vince. Just look at what’s happened. Lisa Greenberg starts asking questions about Arnie Hillman: she falls off the wagon and decides to go for a moonlight swim in the middle of winter. Next, Cathy Stenmar
k trots off to see Hillman and then as soon as this Atkinson guy turns up with the paintings she starts asking questions about Reiss who very obligingly falls down stairs and breaks his neck.’

  ‘Georg Reiss was ninety-four years old for Christ’s sake. Shit like that happens when you’re his age.’

  Pauli shook his head. ‘You know, Vince, under normal circumstances I’d agree with you, but what’s just happened to his son confirms it.’

  ‘Confirms what?’

  ‘That someone else knows.’

  Novak slapped his hand angrily against his leg. ‘How can they know? Are you suggesting that either your wife or me has told somebody? Why the hell would either of us want to do that? If you’re going to make accusations, Eric, then at least stop beating about the bush. Just come out and do it.’

  ‘Calm down, Vince. Nobody’s accusing you of anything,’ said Pauli, the tension in his features belying the calmness in his voice. ‘We didn’t even know Reiss was alive until, ironically, right before he died. And we only just found out he had a son.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘The old man was ninety-four. Maybe he didn’t want the secret to go to the grave with him. Maybe he told someone.’

  ‘That’s a lot of maybes, Eric. And if he’d told someone, they’d have sold the story for millions.’

  ‘Depends who he told, doesn’t it?’

  Novak put his head on one side and looked at his boss. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me,’ he said.

  ‘OK, now if like you said somebody had gone to the press, it would be all over the front pages by now, right?’

  Novak nodded and Pauli continued. ‘But if he’d gone to someone who wants to keep a Republican in the White House badly enough or somebody, anybody who’s serious about stopping me becoming President, then what would they do?’